But some of the tariff conditions hadn't taken effect yet and it doesn't explain the Biden administration strengthening some of the trade terms in the US's favor. Trump's team went back to them with 2018 was then would lessen the terms if the Chinese agreed to buy more American-made products. They failed to do that, so Biden claimed he was going to review the terms, but never did. I can't think of almost any trade deals that were largely augmented. He lessened tariffs on steel, aluminum and Airbus components with the EU... if they stopped putting tariffs on Harley-Davidsons. The reengagement with the WTO was perfunctory and the Paris Agreement is generally meaningless.
Yeah, dude. I'm ok. After all of the security threats against FEMA in NC/SC, where folks were bragging on twitter about shooting FEMA personnel and our senior leaders were being doxxed (tweets about where our officials kids go to school, for example) and their profiles on LinkedIn/Facebook spoofed, we were told it's a good idea to scrub social media, and limit our online presence. Then, after the election, I considered it a good thing to keep my shit to a minimum, because the incoming administration has promised to fire thousands of us. I could be a target based on my sexuality, my voting record, my service history, etc., and decided the less I put out there, the better. I don't think I'll be with the Agency much longer, as waiting around to be fired isn't a good look. The moment I turned all of the social media shit off, I realized that I had fallen victim to the same misinformation machine, it just functioned in the opposite way. I wasn't being misinformed to promote Trump, I was being misinformed to be over-confident and to obscure the shifts happening in the electorate. The dialog, commentary, rhetoric, whatever is all very problematic, and it's ultimately just noise to distract. What I see happening is Trump filling his cabinet with people that are going to siphon money into enterprises he and his ilk own. NASA will get gutted, and that $ will go to SpaceX, is just the beginning. I am 100% sure of this, because I watched it happen during COVID, and was disgusted by it (and to some extent worried about signing off on a lot of it, because it was so blatantly illegal). I just wrapped up a major project with DHS and CISA, and peeked ahead at the transition...I'm scared, at a level I have never been. Not even during the pandemic. The inside baseball is terrifying, because the things these people want to do are straight up awful. I'm not talking about the anti-trans folks going after a tiny sliver of the population, or them wanting to fire millions of people. I mean, everyone. Everyone. The shit in the news is bad, the shit that doesn't leave the room is unthinkable. This is not like the last time, where they just wanted to fleece the federal government. This is worse. I realize I'm putting a lot of faith in a chronic liar, and last time next to nothing actually happened (remember the Wall?). If they accomplish even 1% of this shit, it will damage the country irrevocably, and there's nothing opposing them. To anyone who voted for this, sincerely, you fucked up. You didn't know what you were signing us up for, I guarantee it. You were lied to, and whatever your reasons were, they were mistaken. If you still believe this will be good for the country, as someone who's loved it and served it in whatever ways I could, fuck you.
Really wishing you could give some indication of what's coming, not like we know your real name to snitch you out.
The tl;dr is that random things you didn't even realize the government was doing for you will suddenly and unceremoniously stop.
Can we do a sticky thread of Trump predictions? Then we can keep track of the prognostications people have made? If we haven’t heard from Nerds maybe he was rounded up and whisked to a FEMA camp for voting democratic in deep red Texas?
This is what I landed on before the election. I know a lot of people say that you have to believe all the things Trump says, but the “lock Hillary up” thing kinda showed that he campaigns on massive retribution, and then pulls back as if he’s magnanimous. But, he brings a shitty businessman’s mind to everything. He sees the presidency as CEO of the company of America, so why doesn’t everybody on either side want the CEO to succeed? And this time around, the people that bring him that energy will get special preference, so it’s just some oligarchical shit. The evangelical megachurches and Big Mormon will probably really push their way in, figuring they can take the reins afterward.
He tried to get his AG's to prosecute her, but they refused to. There were people around him that kept his idiocy under control last time. This time there aren't.
Ah. Well, I stand corrected on that. But I still think my second paragraph is the extent of his thinking, in most cases. The line of people ready to exploit it is long and growing.
Or, his luck finally ran out and he died in a really nerds'y way. Like being hit by a boat that fell off a plane, while he was on a ladder spraying hotshot at a wasp nest that just so happend to be built on a runaway carousel full of his trump loving in-laws... after a half marathon, of course.
Jack Smith has dropped the charges against Trump, relying on an OLC opinion that a sitting President cannot be prosecuted. It's genuinely depressing that the people who voted to destroy the rule of law didn't even understand what they had before they smashed it like a toddler.
Godfather of the Kremlin outlines the transition of the Soviet Union into a "democracy," which was just a grab by the wealthy, connected business owners of all the businesses and properties which were previously under state ownership. Today, they are oligarchs. It feels a lot like the same play.
Who's ready for an across-the-board 25% tariff on all goods imported from our two biggest trading partners? Spoiler
I wonder what kind of bump the economy is going to have at the end of this year when many people like myself are stockpiling staples.
I did the same for my soap biz. I'm actually still buying stuff. I have to move some shit in the garage to accommodate the boxes of shit. I'm hoping to be set for a solid year. After that, I'll just have to raise my prices.